Chapter 48
T he next time Charlie gets up, she almost collapses in the doorway, but Maddox is there to catch her almost as soon as she falters. They exchange a glance I can’t quite read. I don’t understand the secret language between the two of them—but then again, I never have.
“You haven’t been being rude to Wendy now, have you?” she asks, to which Maddox answers by proceeding to help her stumble back to her room.
“How are you?” Nolan emerges in the doorway, fitting his hand between my shoulder blades. “Should we follow them or leave them be for a moment?” he whispers.
Before I can respond, Charlie pipes up.
“No, don’t leave. I can’t make a plan without the two of you.”
Nolan and I exchange a look. Then he beckons me back inside the bedroom. Maddox goes to help her into bed, but she waves him off.
“I’d rather sit,” she says.
Together, they maneuver toward the rocking chair in the corner. Maddox sets her into it gently, and Charlie lets out a relieved sigh as she sinks into the plush pillows. “It feels so lovely to be upright. My spine feels like it’s molded to the shape of that lumpy bed.”
Charlie looks at me, then glances down at my empty arms hanging aimlessly by my sides with nothing to hold. Grief streaks across her face, and it pierces me too, because I know it’s not for herself.
“The three of you need to catch me up,” she says. “What do we have planned?”
I exchange glances with Nolan and Maddox.
“We were waiting for you to recover, Charlie,” Maddox says. “Now that you’re awake, I’m sure the healer will let us know when you can be moved. A timeline for recovery, what to expect, all of that. He wasn’t very helpful at first.”
“I’m not talking about me,” says Charlie. “I meant, what’s the plan for getting back your son?” She looks back and forth between Nolan and me expectantly. A twist pulls through my heart.
“There is no plan,” Nolan says, glancing at me hesitantly. “It’s been discussed, but there is no plan.”
Her face pales. “No plan?”
“The Sister took him,” I explain, unsure of what all she remembers. When she first woke up, she had made the connection that I had turned my child over to the Sister, but I have no idea the degree to which her memories remain consistent.
“Oh yes, I know that,” she says. “What I’m asking is how we’re going to get him back from her.”
Nolan pulls up a chair for me near the edge of the bed.
When I sit, he stands behind me, rubbing my shoulders.
“I’ve been throwing around ideas in my mind of how to get to the Sister, but none of them seem all that feasible.
Of all of them, the Nomad seems to be our best bet.
Nolan’s intel informs him the Nomad is still unaccounted for.
He, along with Tink, seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. ”
“Well, there has to be some other way. Some other person who has a connection with her,” says Maddox. “She meddles enough in everyone else’s business. What if we can find another one of her minions? Someone like Malia who’s enslaved to do her bidding. Someone who could lead us there.”
“And how would we find one of them?” asks Nolan.
“The Sister has no more dealings with us, so it’s not likely there will be any in our vicinity.
We’d have to scour the world. And even then, we’d have to rely on the rumor mill—barter for leads, and with good coin.
It would be a wild goose chase. We don’t even know if she’s recruited anyone else to work for her. ”
“We know one person,” I say, fighting my urge to whisper the statement.
Three heads turn in my direction.
“No,” says Nolan.
I bite my lip. The name swirls in my consciousness, taunting me.
The counterargument in my head has been firm: he wouldn’t help us even if he could.
And I’m not sure that he can. I’m not sure he’s of any use to the Sister anymore.
For all I know, she’s cut off all contact.
Still, he knew how to reach her in the past.
I convey all this to my friends.
Still, Nolan shakes his head. “No. We’re not going to Peter.”
Charlie opens her mouth, but Nolan interrupts her. “And before anyone claims that my not wanting to accept help from him is about my pride, might I remind you he’s betrayed us at every turn?”
Betrayed us. My heart grows heavy when I glimpse Nolan’s true meaning behind his words. Peter’s been betraying him years longer than the rest of us.
“Nolan,” I say. “If anyone knows how to contact her, it’s him.”
“Yes, and if anyone knows how to twist a situation to his own benefit, it’s him,” says Nolan. “We can’t do this anymore. We can’t enter into bargains with people who don’t have our best interests at heart, who don’t have our son’s best interests at heart.”
“What if we didn’t make a bargain?”
“What are you suggesting we barter with?” asks Nolan.
I frown, fumbling with how to explain my plan without sounding like a na?ve fool. “We just have to find a way to convince him,” I finally settle on.
“We have nothing to offer Peter,” says Maddox. “You’re the only thing he wants.”
It’s Nolan who interrupts him. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” I say. “If we can find Peter, I think I know how to get through to him.”
Nolan tenses, and I put my hand on his, where he’s clenching my shoulder, probably without realizing he’s doing it.
“But Maddox is right,” Charlie says. “We have absolutely nothing he wants.”
“No,” I say, “we don’t. But that’s the thing. I might have been his prisoner, but I learned him. I know him. We have nothing to barter with, but bartering is not the only means of persuasion.”
“You knew him,” Nolan says. “Neither of us knows who that man is now.”
“Do you trust me?” I ask.
There’s a silence in the room. One that’s almost deafening.
“I do,” says Charlie. “And I’m the one you shot, so my opinion should count more.”
“Technically, she cut off Nolan’s hand,” says Maddox, but Nolan shoots him a glare.
Maddox looks at me, his face softening. “Just tell us what you need.”
“Wendy,” says Charlie, the playfulness bleeding from her face.
Nolan and Maddox left us alone to talk after discussing our plans for recruiting Peter.
All of a sudden, my friend who was so active in the planning looks so tired, so worn, and I find myself questioning the reassurance of the healer. But then she grips my wrist tightly.
“I need you to promise me something,” she says.
“Anything,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No. None of that. That’s exactly my point, Wendy. You can’t be making promises anymore. Not ones where you don’t know the consequences. You can’t be making bargains. Not with the Fates. Not even with the fae.”
I open my mouth—and shut it again.
I want to be able to make this promise to her, but I know that deep down, if an opportunity presents itself—if it means saving my son—I’ll enter another bargain in an instant.
“I can see what you’re thinking,” she says. “And I know. I know you would do anything to get your little boy back. I’m not trying to argue against that. And I will do anything I can to help you. But can’t you see? It’s a lie.”
“What’s a lie?”
“These people. These creatures who rope you into bargains. They only have the power to do so because you allow them to. They lead you to believe you are powerless without them. That they are the ones holding the cards. They convince you that their way is the only way. That you are not clever enough, or smart enough, or powerful enough to do it without them. But you are,” she says. “There’s always another way.”
“Not always.”
She squeezes my wrist again. “I need a promise. Not a bargain. Nothing binding. Just your word. A promise between friends.”
Something about that touches my heart, but before I can respond, she continues.
“And in case you think this is about me, about my injury, please don’t.
Of course, that’s part of it. I don’t want to see you carrying the guilt for someone else getting hurt.
But Wendy, you have to stop relying on the people who care nothing about you. This plan that you have with Peter?—”
“It’s the only way?—”
“Please, just let me finish,” she says. “I’m not opposed to it. Not at all. I’m fully supportive of you exploring any option you can to get your son back. But do not give away your power.”
“But that’s just it,” I say. “I have no power left.”
What I don’t say is that my power was taken from me the moment the Sister lifted my baby from my arms. All the cards are in her hands. And as long as Peter is the only one who has access to the Sister, the ability to look behind her shoulder at the cards belongs to him.
“No,” she says. “They have a power of their own. But you have a power of yours too. One that neither of them can understand. You love your son, and you would give yourself up to get him back. Neither of them understands that kind of love,” she says.
“They understand obsession. But that’s all they have.
It’s not as strong as what you—what we—have. ”
“What they have sure feels stronger,” I say.
“Promise me,” says Charlie. “Promise me—no more bargains. No matter what they offer you. No matter what they threaten.”
“Charlie, if it’s between making a bargain and saving my son, I know what I’ll pick.”
A single tear slides down her cheek. “That’s what I’m trying to say. That’s what they want to make you believe, that there’s a dichotomy. Only two choices. But Wendy… make a third. If it comes down to it—make a third.”
“I…”
But then Charlie squeezes my hand again. “Please trust me on this.”
“Okay,” I say. “I promise.”
And though it’s not a bargain, not binding like it would be with a fae or the Fates, its bonds wrap around me all the same. Except they’re not shackles like the bargains I’m used to making, but a tether—carrying me to my friend, joining our hearts.
A promise I know I won’t break. Not because I don’t have the ability to. But simply because I won’t.
“All right, then,” says Charlie, her face relaxing as her eyes flutter and she drifts off to sleep.